Just as they do in their support for fair trade and their prescience about the recession, Americans separate themselves from the elite media and opinion makers when it comes to “Buy America” provisions. A February Pew Research Center poll shows that 66% of Americans think Buy American provisions in the stimulus bill are a good idea. Only 24% think they’re a bad idea because they might provoke retaliation. This isn’t simply patriotism or nativism; it’s the common sense of the people that their tax dollars should be put to work first in the US, and that we need to recover from our economic crisis before we use taxpayer funds to create jobs overseas. Interestingly, this is an issue on which Democrats, Republicans and Independents largely agree. Only seven percentage points separated Democrats (70%) from Independents (63%), and Republicans were right in the middle at 66%. Pew Research Poll